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What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

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Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#391

Post by ponow »

guhidalg wrote: post #381
tomp wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a nice way to excuse your racism. A lot of people use this perverted logic. But at the end of the day, it's still evil racism. Different "worlds" (neighbourhoods, schools, health care) doesn't happen because of skin color, it happens because of wealth/poverty. So if you apply a racist filter on top of the (implicit) wealth filter, you're just being racist against poor Asian & white people.

Ya you are, but you know white people and Asians are less likely to be poor compared to Hispanics and African Americans so reality is fighting against your argument.

No it isn't.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#392

Post by guhidalg »

thegrimmest wrote: post #60
paxys wrote: post #32

It's telling that this person posted a job listing, interviewed dozens of candidates, realized they couldn't proceed because they hadn't interviewed any minority candidate, tried for months and were still unsuccessful at finding a single one , and the take away wasn't that they should fix their broken recruiting pipeline but that the corporate policy was what was wrong.

Why do you suppose that a non-broken recruiting pipeline would result in more diverse candidates? Do you really think all candidate pools in all professions, and in all locations, are as diverse as the population at all times?

I think this really varies for each position, but most SWE positions really don't require special skills beyond a CS degree from a 4-year program. Sure, there may be special industry knowledge that you need to know but I'm not talking about languages, frameworks, databases, etc... if you studied CS, I expect you to have the capacity to learn this shit. You can learn the problem domain in well enough in 6 months and rely on your PMs and boss to fill in the details.

If you are truly in a domain where you cannot hire CS graduates, then D&I is going to put a lot of burden on your recruitment team to find candidates to meet slating requirements. But you probably aren't...

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#393

Post by implements »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #345
implements wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be the case that in societies where women aren’t arbitrarily discriminated against they seek greater engagement with the careers gender socialisation attract them to ie “women are better actualised as women in societies where female success isn’t artificially stifled by glass ceilings”. A factor in that could be that there’s a recognition that those ceilings may still exist in STEM fields, so career minded w…

I appreciate you sharing your thoughts >“Men and women are [innately] different from each other in lots of ways” is false, and the differences are cultural and rooted in socialisation that we, the the name of true individualistic inclusivity, should seek to minimise. There is widespread scientific (note: among _scientists_) consensus that this is not correct. Talk to an endocrinologist or a behavioral geneticist, or…

I’m prepared to believe that those differences exist wrt reproductive role ie that humans have some sexed instincts around mating and child care, but, as per what right-thinking people believe about about race and intelligence / personality / emotionality (viz ‘races’ don’t actually have different characters or abilities) I don’t think the sexes are fundamentally different mentally.

It used to be the case until fairly recently (my lifetime) that “women are suited to be nurses, and men to be doctors” but no-one believes that kind of thing now. It should be possible to culturally evolve past expectations of significant psychological differences between men and women, just as we have between white and other races.

(There’s a discussion to be had about the value of preserving cultural differences between groups, particularly at the expense of individuals within those groups, but it’s a massive can of worms)

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#394

Post by pedrosorio »

notch656a wrote: post #276
fallingknife wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the whole interview. Just the first part of many questions. You have to print a string abcdefghij... like abcd efgh ijkl... And you would be surprised by the number of people who it takes 20 minutes to do that. Doing it in 2 minutes doesn't mean you're competent, but taking 20 damn sure means you're not

I've been coding for over a decade including things 1000x as complicated as that (think embedded systems from the ground up). I could easily take 20 minutes or even fail doing such a task because I'm literally never asked to code things in a professional environment with 3+ strangers breathing down my neck and judging me based on some simplified fizzbuzz. I'm convinced white board / live coding interviews don't do mu…

I have never been in an interview with 3+ strangers. Is that common?

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#396

Post by dddaaa34 »

logicalmonster wrote: post #2

According to the Microsoft 2021 Annual Diversity And Inclusion report, 34.9% of employees identified as Asian in the US, far exceeding their overall representation in the US population. Why are Asians doing so well? Why can't we replicate this for other groups? And doesn't trying to hire more of other races imply that mathematically speaking, fewer Asians must be hired and promoted to achieve greater equality? Please…

intelligence doesn't have the same distribution across groups.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#397

Post by LatteLazy »

paxys wrote: post #32

It's telling that this person posted a job listing, interviewed dozens of candidates, realized they couldn't proceed because they hadn't interviewed any minority candidate, tried for months and were still unsuccessful at finding a single one , and the take away wasn't that they should fix their broken recruiting pipeline but that the corporate policy was what was wrong.

I work at a crypto/fintech startup. There aren't many women in tech, in finance or in crypto. Even fewer in all three. It took us months to find a woman to hire when our HR insisted we do so before hiring anyone else.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#398

Post by ironman1478 »

badpun wrote: post #258
tptacek wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. Many of the elite eng school grads Microsoft hires don't work out. At the upper levels of this industry, "meritocracy" is really just credentialism --- something embedded in your own comment --- which is something you learn quickly when you abandon resumes and interviews and replace them with work sample testing.

Companies like Microsoft want the best people. It's not brick laying, there's no "qualified for the job" tick box. The effects in software are non-linear, and one brilliant hire can create more value than 100 mediocre ones. These companies are actively hurt by having to hire second-best diversity hires, even if they're technically qualified for the job (whatever that means).

What does best mean? That is very hard to quantify especially when the job is more than just LeetCode. It requires communicating with other teams, writing skills, general statistical thinking and data analysis skills (something not tested on leetcode), ability to receive feedback, ability to understand customer requirements, etc.

I do not mean to imply that "diversity" hires have those properties and non-diversity hires do not. However, I'd argue that if you don't make an effort to at least talk to everybody you can (phone screens), then you are going to miss a lot of people who are great.

Re: What “diversity and inclusion” means at Microsoft

#399

Post by [deleted] »

Dig1t wrote: post #382

I work at a different FAANG and it seems like more and more the only news that we get from corporate is related to DEI. Also a lot of hiring details are now hidden from ICs. It used to be that you would be apart of the interview panel as an interviewer and then you would get together with your team afterwards and everyone on the team would vote yes/no and that would pretty much be it. Now it’s made by a manager elsew…

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